I always get a good chuckle when they run that Dominos Pizza commercial where a sample panel of people are brought to a tomato field. The walls pop down and the panel realizes that they are surrounded by acres of red, ripe tomatoes. The idea is that these vine-ripened tomatoes go into the “freshly prepared” pizza sauce. Now a little reality for you. The tomatoes that go into any type of canned sauces are the ones that don’t make the foodservice grade. They are bruised, scarred and crushed tomatoes that cannot be sold as a whole tomato due to their condition.

Now the reality continues…

The tomatoes that do make the grade are picked in the field green (not red right out of the field like the commercial implies). The green tomatoes are then shipped many miles. At some point along the way they are introduced to a ripening agent such as Ethylene gas. This will turn them the color we expect from a tomato. However, it does very little for the flavor. True vine ripened tomatoes develop the flavor on the vine from turning starches into sugars. The result is a tomato that tastes like a tomato (as crazy as that may sound). Most products that we see in our kitchen are varieties of a tomato built for function, not flavor. The tomato varieties we see coming through our back door are meant to travel. If you really want to buy for flavor, purchase a local product that is allowed to ripen like nature intended it to.

As for the Dominos commercial, if the average consumer believes what they see on TV then their marketing team has done what it set out to do. If anyone believes this then they are sure to believe the Dinty Moore Beef Stew commercial where they show a Whole Beef Tenderloin being used as one of the key components to its product.